Steve Pond's Blog, page 1999
January 29, 2020
Samantha Bee’s Fake Bloomberg Super Bowl Ad Is Definitely Worth $10 Million (Video)
One of the weirder things about this year’s Super Bowl is that among the hugely expensive commercials for all sorts of consumer products will be at least a couple of political campaign ads, including a full 60-second long spot for Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is paying at least $10 million for the spot, which, damn. That’s a lot to spend on a campaign that probably won’t see even tepid success in an already packed primary. Which means people can probably expect something designed to be really, really attention-grabbing.
How will it look? We have no idea. But on “Full Frontal” Wednesday, Samantha Bee made an educated guess with a very funny, ruthlessly satirical parody ad mocking Bloomberg’s campaign, his very public record, and pretty much every single Super Bowl ad from the last several decades.
Also Read: Super Bowl Parties 2020: TheWrap's Ultimate Guide to the Hottest Invites in Miami (Updating)
The ad imagines that Bloomberg’s pitch will be that voting for “a responsible candidate” is stupid and nerdy, unlike the former New York mayor who, we find out, is a major party animal. “That’s right! It’s former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg” who, the ad promises, “ain’t your daddy’s straight white billionaire.”
The ad tells people how when he was mayor, Bloomberg made sodas smaller, hypes his oft-mocked plan to turn the White House into an open-office, and of course reminds people that Bloomberg “sorta apologized for stop-and-frisk” policing, a policy widely criticized as racist. But before the ad’s protagonist can process that last bit, or the cost of the ad, a party breaks out and drowns out all the misgivings.
The fake ad also features a doggie that looks a lot like Spuds Mackenzie, and an appearance by two-time Super Bowl champion linebacker Carl Banks. Watch it below.
When it comes to wasting money and bad ideas, Mike Bloomberg is consistent. With a little help from 2x Super Bowl champ @CarlBanksGIII, we managed to get our hands on Bloomberg’s $10 million Super Bowl ad. pic.twitter.com/l1YuQeHMhD
— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) January 30, 2020
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Stephen Colbert Sifts ‘Through the Logical Turd’ That Was Alan Dershowitz’s Trump Defense (Video)
Stephen Colbert spent his opening monologue Wednesday “sifting through the logical turd” Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz “just pinched out in the Senate well,” by which we mean Dersh’s novel (and if we’re being honest, unsettling) defense of Trump’s conduct.
But, while Colbert lamented that “it’s hard to find the largest corn kernel of logical fallacy,” he managed to identify one that most of us who watched Dershowitz’s performance found the most off-putting: The argument that it’s OK for the president to seek a quid pro quo arrangement in order to manipulate U.S. elections because, as Dersh put it, Trump’s reelection “is in the public interest.”
“No it’s not,” Colbert shouted in response to that argument. “Only the public gets to decide what’s in the public interest, not the politicians. In fact, it’s ‘we the people,’ not you the douchebag.”
“That’s why,” Colbert continued, “on election day you don’t see a politician wearing a sticker that says ‘you voted, trust me.'”
Also Read: Trump Says He's the Only Person Who Knows 'What the Hell Happened to Fox News'
Colbert also took issue without another argument Dershowitz made on Wednesday. “The complex middle case is ‘I wanna be elected, I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was, and if I’m not elected the national interest will suffer greatly.’ That cannot be an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz said.
“That cannot be an impeachable offense? You can do anything if you believe in yourself? What sort of inspirational posters are hanging in Dershowitz’s office?”
Of course, Colbert had the answer: “Confidence — When you believe you can fly, you’re above the law.”
Watch the clip below:
TONIGHT: Does the law apply to Donald Trump? Not according to his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/YeVmfkvPkd
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) January 30, 2020
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‘The Confession of Lily Dare’ Theater Review: Charles Busch Goes Back to Camp
Over the last three decades, Charles Busch has made a name for himself as a playwright and performer with a series of send-ups of classic film genres from beach-blanket comedies to femme-fatale noir to ’50s horror. “The Confession of Lily Dare,” which opened Wednesday at Off Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theatre in a Primary Stages production, taps a more obscure period in Hollywood history: pre-Hayes code melodramas of the late 1930s featuring women who are forced into sordid lives, often in prostitution, and make horrific sacrifices for children they’ve given up for adoption in infancy.
As usual, drag veteran Busch plays Lily Dare, who is at first plucked from a Swiss convent school and plopped into the San Francisco brothel run by her mother’s long-estranged sister (Jennifer Van Dyck) just before the 1906 earthquake. She soon encounters a wide range of Bay Area society, from a sweetheart prostitute (Nancy Anderson) to a well-heeled john (Howard McGillin) to a gay sidekick named Mickey (Kendal Sparks) who plays piano in the brothel’s cabaret space.
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The good news is that you don’t need to be familiar with films like 1929’s “Madame X” or 1931’s “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” with Helen Hayes to enjoy the proceedings — or the witty dialogue that the characters deliver in a rat-a-tat fashion. At its best, Busch’s script plays as both an homage to the old films as well as a modern commentary on it.
As Mickey notes at one point in a line that would not have passed muster even in pre-code Hollywood, “There’s always work to be found for a piano player who knows ragtime and a hooker who does anal.”
By now, Busch has honed his routine, eliciting laughs from even throwaway lines with a drop in his vocal register or a well-timed eyebrow raise. And the rest of the cast — which also includes Christopher Borg playing everything from a baron to an Italian opera director to an Irish priest — matches him in a tone that remains broadly comic without ever veering into spoof.
Busch’s longtime collaborator Carl Andress directs with cinematic panache and a nice sense of pacing, aided by Rachel Townsend’s striking costumes and B.T. Whitehill’s evocative set.
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Vanessa Bryant Releases Statement on Deaths of Husband Kobe, Daughter Gianna: ‘I Just Wish I Could Hug Them’
Vanessa Bryant released a statement on Instagram on Wednesday about the death of her husband Kobe Bryant and their daughter, Gianna. Both were killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday, along with seven others.
Read Vanessa’s full statement below:
My girls and I want to thank the millions of people who’ve shown support and love during this horrific time. Thank you for all the prayers. We definitely need them. We are completely devastated by the sudden loss of my adoring husband, Kobe — the amazing father of our children; and my beautiful, sweet Gianna — a loving, thoughtful, and wonderful daughter, and amazing sister to Natalia, Bianka, and Capri
We are also devastated for the families who lost their loved ones on Sunday, and we share in their grief intimately. There aren’t enough words to describe our pain right now. I take comfort in knowing that Kobe and Gigi both knew that they were so deeply loved. We were so incredibly blessed to have them in our lives. I wish they were here with us forever. They were our beautiful blessings taken from us too soon.
I’m not sure what our lives hold beyond today, and it’s impossible to imagine life without them. But we wake up each day, trying to keep pushing because Kobe, and our baby girl, Gigi, are shining on us to light the way. Our love for them is endless — and that’s to say, immeasurable. I just wish I could hug them, kiss them and bless them. Have them here with us, forever.
Also Read: ABC News Suspends Correspondent Who Mistakenly Reported All of Kobe Bryant's Children Died in Crash
Thank you for sharing your joy, your grief and your support with us. We ask that you grant us the respect and privacy we will need to navigate this new reality.
To honor our Team Mamba family, the Mamba Sports Foundation has set up the MambaOnThree Fund to help support the other families affected by this tragedy. To donate, please go to MambaOnThree.org. To further Kobe and Gianna’s legacy in youth sports, please visit MambaSportsFoundation.org.
Thank you so much for lifting us up in your prayers, and for loving Kobe, Gigi, Natalia, Bianka, Capri and me. #Mamba #Mambacita #GirlsDad #DaddysGirls #Family
The duo was expected to participate in a basketball tournament at the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif; 13-year-old Gianna was playing, while 41-year-old Kobe was coaching.
The NBA star is survived by his wife, Vanessa, and three other daughters: Natalia, Bianka and Capri.
See the full post below:
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Vanessa Bryant ???? (@vanessabryant) on Jan 29, 2020 at 4:59pm PST
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The Oscars Homestretch: ‘1917’ Is on Top as Voting Begins
It’s still January, but it’s almost time to bring this circus to an end. Oscar voting begins on Thursday and ends only five days later, next Tuesday. Only 11 of the 41 official Academy members’ screenings remain in Los Angeles, and only three short-film screenings remain in New York.
The Nominees Luncheon has already happened; the indie contingent is back from Sundance; and three of the four major Hollywood guilds — the Screen Actors Guild, the Producers Guild and the Directors Guild — have handed out their awards.
In the last week, we’ve learned a few more things as we head into the lightning round of voting. For instance:
“1917” looks like a solid frontrunner.
Sam Mendes’ World War I epic won the Producers Guild Award on Jan. 18 and the Directors Guild Award on Jan. 25. Those two awards, the two most reliable Oscar predictors, should be enough to make it a clear favorite.
In the 30 years that both groups have been giving out awards, they’ve honored the same film 22 times, and 17 of those have gone on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. (The five that didn’t: “Apollo 13,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “La La Land” and “Gravity,” though that last film tied with Oscar winner “12 Years a Slave” at the DGA.)
More to the point: In the 10 years since the Academy and the Producers Guild both moved to 10 nominees and to the preferential system of counting votes, the PGA and DGA have agreed seven times (eight if you count the “Gravity”/”12 Years” tie) and correctly predicted the Oscar winner six of those times.
Throw in the Golden Globe Award for drama film, and the statistics get even more formidable. And if “1917” wins the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) on Sunday, as it most likely will, all the stats will point to an Oscar win.
And yet the race doesn’t really feel solid.
Despite the stats, though, this has been an unsettled year. And fans of Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” can point to the example of five of the last seven years, when Best Picture and Best Director went to different films.
The list: “Argo” for picture and “Life of Pi” for director in 2013; “12 Years a Slave” for picture and “Gravity” for director in 2014; “Spotlight” for picture and “The Revenant” for director in 2016; “Moonlight” for picture and “La La Land” for director in 2017; “Green Book” for picture and “Roma” for director in 2019.
In every case, the bigger, more complicated movie won for director while the smaller, often actor-driven film won for picture. And while that kind of split would favor “1917” for director, it leaves an opening for “Parasite” for picture, particularly since that film won the SAG ensemble award.
I wrote about this last week, and about how the biggest obstacle in the way of “Parasite” is that it is a certain winner in the Best International Feature Film category, which is a way for voters to give it a kind of best-picture prize. Its chances would have looked better if Bong had prevailed at the DGA, but it can’t be written off even now.
Something funny is going on at the Annie Awards.
ASIFA-Hollywood, the organization that presents the Annie Awards, reworked its voting rules a few years ago when Disney stopped submitting its films and withdrew financial support after years in which DreamWorks Animation was curiously dominant (with, for instance, “Kung Fu Panda” winning 10 awards and “WALL-E” being shut out completely). At the time, it emerged that DWA paid for memberships for almost all of its employees, padding the voter rolls with loyalists.
DWA and Disney do not currently pay for ASIFA memberships for their employees, according to those aware of the company policies, but there’s a new kid in town in the animation game — Netflix. And Netflix films and television productions completely dominated the Annie Awards on Saturday night, with “Klaus” winning seven awards, “I Lost My Body” winning three and Netflix picking up the lion’s share of awards in the television categories, as well.
It felt like an old-style Annie Award party-line vote, which means that “Klaus” may not be the Oscar frontrunner that those results would otherwise suggest.
The Writers Guild might help clear a few things up, but then again it might not.
The last of the major Hollywood guilds, the Writers Guild of America, is handing out its awards on Saturday in simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York. But the WGA occupies an odd position on the guild circuit because it restricts its awards to screenplays written under WGA contracts or those of related international guilds, which means some Oscar contenders (and nominees) are ineligible.
This year, that includes Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” which is one of the Oscar frontrunners in the Best Original Screenplay category. With that script out of the running, a win for “Parasite,” “1917” or “Marriage Story” won’t be nearly as significant in predicting the Oscars.
On the other hand, the top contenders in the Oscars’ Best Adapted Screenplay category — “The Irishman,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Little Women” and “Joker” — are all on the WGA ballot. This race could be one to keep an eye on to determine if Greta Gerwig can keep up the winning streak she began last Saturday at the Scripter Awards.
Everybody is fried.
We already knew this, but it was reinforced even more strongly after having to follow five simultaneous awards shows on Saturday night and after talking to people at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon on Monday: The shortened awards season has drained everybody as it hurtles toward the earliest-ever Feb. 9 Oscars.
Was that the reason for the disappointingly low turnout of actors at the luncheon? It was certainly a factor. Where the annual event usually assembles a full slate of five nominees from at least one of the four acting categories, this year it drew two of the five Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor nominees and three of the five in Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Of the 19 acting nominees (Scarlett Johansson took two slots), 10 of them made it to the lunch and nine did not, a fact that did not go unnoticed in the room.
So now we’ve got the Visual Effects Society Awards on Wednesday, the Writers Guild and the Art Directors Guild on Saturday, BAFTA (and the Super Bowl) on Sunday. And then, suddenly, it’ll be Oscar week. And yes, we’re all fried.
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Oscar Short Doc Nominees Discuss Tackling Tough Subject Matter
As has been the case for the last few years, the 2020 Oscar nominees in the Best Documentary Short category are a remarkable bunch, and TheWrap gathered the filmmakers behind them to speak on Tuesday about the work that went into exploring such tough subjects.
Possibly the most sensitive topic touched on in this year’s field was that of Resignation Syndrome, a fairly new psychological case that has seen hundreds of traumatized refugee children become so mentally unwell that they fall into a comatose state for months or even years. In “Life Overtakes Me,” director-producers Kristine Samuelson and John Haptas managed to earn the trust of three refugee families with children in such a state and explored how they handle such a difficult situation while fighting to retain their asylum status in Sweden.
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Samuelson and Haptas said that while the families were willing to participate to help spread awareness of Resignation Syndrome, they were also afraid that participating would give away their location to oppressive governments that were hunting them. The directors, who did all the filming on their own, had to be careful to not give any information about where the families came from or where they were living in Sweden, and that secrecy was still top priority when Netflix called with an offer to put the doc on their streaming service.
“When they came to us for a distribution deal, we told them that we wouldn’t sign any contract that didn’t include an agreement that they wouldn’t stream our doc in the countries where the families came from, because they were afraid that the people who tortured them would see it,” Samuelson explained. “To their credit, Netflix immediately agreed.”
Similar care to protect the doc’s subjects was at the core of filming for Carol Dysinger’s “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl).” Dysinger traveled to Kabul to do a film on the work of Skateistan, a school that offers Afghan girls the education denied to their mothers by Taliban rule as well as afterschool skateboarding lessons.
While the film espouses a sense of hope with shots of young girls excited to learn, it never pushes away the hard truths of life in the Afghanistan capital, where bombs go off on a weekly basis and the threat of the Taliban’s return constantly looms. Dysinger notes that her film team had to constantly hide any identifying information about Skateistan’s secret location and protect the identities of those who did not want their faces to be seen in the film.
“I could never show you the walls that surrounded the school attached to any identifying backgrounds, I had to avoid filming their security system, but within that show the sense of freedom these girls had in this school once the cloister was sealed,” Dysinger said.
Balancing uplifting narratives with undercurrents of sorrow was also a challenge for Laura Nix when she made “Walk Run Cha-Cha,” the most personal of the five films. For several years, Nix followed Paul and Millie Cao, a Vietnamese couple who were forced to separate by the impending Vietnam War but reunited and married in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley. Forty years after their separation, they are making up for lost time by learning to dance competitively.
While the Caos initially accepted Nix’s offer out of excitement to show off their moves, they were more hesitant to discuss how they were separated. To make them more comfortable, Nix only interviewed them without a camera, using their audio-only interviews as voiceovers accompanied by the Caos going about their lives and taking care of their parents.
“Sometimes people open up when they’re talking about personal things on camera, and other times there’s much more intimate conversations when it’s just two people and a microphone on the side,” Nix said. “People ask me if there’s footage of the two talking and I always tell them, ‘No, all of the interviews were just done on audio.'”
Sami Khan and Smriti Mundhra also became sensitive of discussing tough topics when making “St. Louis Superman,” a film about activist Bruce Franks and his three years as a Missouri state representative in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s murder and the subsequent Ferguson riots in 2014. Franks talks openly about fighting to get legislation declaring gun violence a public health emergency in the state in a system dominated by white Republicans.
Along with Brown’s death, Franks was motivated by the death of his brother Chris, who was shot when he was nine years old. As the filmmakers talked with Franks for the film and were accompanied by him to screenings, they became more and more aware of the mental toll his work was taking on him, so much so that he stepped down from the state legislature last year due to severe trauma from the death of a close friend.
Also Read: Oscar Short Nominees Discuss Creating Fiction From Bits of Reality
“I became very aware of how he was being asked, again and again, to talk about the worst day of his life,” Mundhra said. “I think it is important to remember, even as we are cheering on these women and people of color who are running for office for the first time and for the best reasons, that this is still a political system that is not designed with them in mind and that trying to get that system to work for the marginalized can be a very draining experience.”
And the kind of trauma dealt with while filming may not only be personal, but societal as well. The final nominee, “In the Absence,” recounts the sinking of the Sewol ferry off the coast of South Korea in 2014 that killed 304 people, including 250 students.
The deaths were found to be largely preventable and were attributed to the failure of the ship’s captain to evacuate the passengers and the poor response from the Coast Guard and government officials that left nearby civilian boats to rescue those they could. The outrage from the disaster is shown in the film to have played a factor in the impeachment and removal of President Park Geun-hye three years later.
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But director Yi Seung-jun and producer Gary Byung-Seok Kam found strong resistance in Korea when doing the documentary, saying that many people thought it was time to “move on” and that the disaster had become “too political” due to Park’s connection to it. But as they talked with survivors, witnesses, and families of the deceased, they believed it was even more necessary to make the film to make sure the world doesn’t forget the truth.
“When we talked with people, there was so much pain. If there’s still pain, then we need to keep talking about this,” Yi said.
Producing “In the Absence” was particularly personal for Kam, who was booked to board the Sewol the day it sank but had to skip the voyage. That made watching much of the first-person footage taken by the students who did not survive especially difficult.
“As documentary makers, we have to learn to cry with one eye, but with the other eye, we have to keep the camera focused and to keep our distance,” Kam said. “That emotional rage and frustration fueled us, but we also had to remember to keep our distance so we can tell their story in the best way.”
The Best Documentary Short nominees, along with those in the live-action and animated categories, will be screened by Shorts.TV and Magnolia Pictures in select theaters nationwide starting this Friday. Click here to find a list of theaters in your area.
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ABC News Suspends Correspondent Who Mistakenly Reported All of Kobe Bryant’s Children Died in Crash
ABC News has suspended its chief national correspondent, Matt Gutman, after he mistakenly reported on live television that all of late basketball star Kobe Bryant’s children had died in Sunday’s helicopter crash.
Gutman corrected the report on a later broadcast to clarify that the only members of the Bryant family who died in the crash were Kobe and his daughter, Gianna. Seven others also perished in the crash.
Gutman’s original remarks were made before the official identities of the victims had been confirmed. He has since apologized for the error.
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“Today I inaccurately reported it was believed that four of Kobe Bryant’s children were on board that flight. That is incorrect. I apologize to Kobe’s family, friends and our viewers,” Gutman tweeted Sunday.
A rep for ABC News confirmed the suspension to TheWrap.
“Reporting the facts accurately is the cornerstone of our journalism,” the rep said. “As he acknowledged on Sunday, Matt Gutman’s initial reporting was not accurate and failed to meet our editorial standards.”
Also Read: Kobe Bryant, 3 Others Identified by Coroner in Deadly Helicopter Crash
ABC News also provided another statement from Gutman.
“We are in the business of holding people accountable. And I hold myself accountable for a terrible mistake, which I deeply regret. I want to personally apologize to the Bryant family for this wrenching loss and any additional anguish my report caused,” he said.
Today I inaccurately reported it was believed that four of Kobe Bryant’s children were on board that flight. That is incorrect. I apologize to Kobe’s family, friends and our viewers. pic.twitter.com/yYwuB9vpZl
— Matt Gutman (@mattgutmanABC) January 27, 2020
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CAA Los Angeles Office Evacuated Due to Suspected Gas Leak
The Los Angeles office of Creative Artists Agency was evacuated Wednesday afternoon due to a suspected gas leak, two individuals with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.
According to a witness, a number of the building’s employees were standing outside as security was sweeping the structure top to bottom. Another witness said there was an odor of gas, so the building was evacuated out of caution. The fire department investigated the scene before letting staff re-enter at around 3:40 p.m.
The CAA building is located at 2000 Avenue of the Stars in Century City.
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TheWrap reached out to the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Police Department for further information about the incident but they have yet to respond.
In 2015, the building was evacuated after a bomb threat. A suspicious package had reportedly been found on the ninth floor of the building. However, LAPD officers at the scene stated that no bomb had been uncovered, but instead found a suspicious package containing an unknown liquid.
Earlier this month, the SAG-AFTRA offices in both Los Angeles and New York were also evacuated after a phone threat.
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Inside the High-Stakes Competition of the Super Bowl Spot
On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will battle it out in Super Bowl LIV for football supremacy. But there will be just as intense of a competition during the commercial breaks, as more than 30 different marketers will all try to make their own big splash.
The Super Bowl has led to a super amount of dollars for the TV networks lucky enough to air them. Over the previous decade, the Super Bowl accounted for $3.66 billion in advertising revenue. Fox, this year’s host, has garnered as much as $5.6 million for a 30-second commercial spot.
It provides an audience that is unparalleled in media. More than 100 million people watch the Super Bowl every year. That’s almost twice the amount of the next-largest TV broadcasts, which are the two NFL semifinal games. The Oscars, which are considered the biggest non-sports TV event every year, drew just under 30 million viewers for its most recent telecast.
“The level of attention and engagement that you get — that is not comparable to anything you see in advertising content,” argues Satya Menon, managing partner, analytics practice for research firm Kantar Media.
But with that super-sized audience comes super-sized expectations. Which begs the question: How do you make a $5 million dollar commercial worth it?
Also Read: The Super Bowl Has Generated $3.6 Billion-Plus in Ad Revenue in the Past 10 Years
“It pretty much it depends on what the brand strategy is within any given year, what we’re trying to accomplish, but it’s clear the Super Bowl provides a real opportunity to make a big impact with a ton of people at the same time,” Hank Izzo, vice president of U.S. marketing for Mars Wrigley, the parent company of well-known candy brands like Skittles, Twix, M&Ms and Snickers, which is getting the Super Bowl treatment this year. “As you just think of the scale of the Super Bowl: It’s the one time of year, honestly, when people are not just watching the game.”
The majority of Super Bowl advertisers are yearly participants. Some, like Anheiser-Busch InBev, buy multiple spots as part of a larger sponsorship deal with the NFL that gives them category exclusivity. For Mars-Wrigley, the choice is not whether or not to place an ad during the game, but which of their brands will get the spotlight.
Izzo said that Snickers made sense this year because it’s the 10-year anniversary of the “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign, which debuted during Super Bowl XLIV in 2010.
“I don’t think there’s any one sort of formula for why we pick a specific brand,” Izzo said.
Hyundai is advertising in the Super Bowl for the 12th time — 2015 was the only year the auto-maker didn’t participate.
“Some years are very easy, in that we have a product launch that times up perfectly. So that’s kind of the natural topic,” said Monique Morin Kumpis, Hyundai’s senior group manager for brand marketing and advertising, who has led the company’s Super Bowl efforts since 2010.
This year, the company is launching a new Remote Smart Parking Assist feature in its 2020 Sonata: “It’s just the perfect, perfect timing for the Super Bowl.”
No Ordinary Ad
Ask any brand marketer or ad agency executive, and the company line will always be that every commercial is just as important as the next one.
But the Super Bowl is, well, the Super Bowl. “It’s the brass ring,” says Barney Goldberg, executive creator director for Innocean, an ad agency that’s handled numerous Super Bowl ads over the years, including Hyundai’s commercial on Sunday.
“They want to outdo each other,” Goldberg says of the competition between the brands and their agencies. “It becomes a big shootout. And I think that’s why it’s got sort of this heightened sense of, ‘We’ve got to do whatever we can to do well.’ Because it’s such an expensive real estate. You certainly can’t go in there and flop. You’ll never hear the end of it.”
Goldberg says that, for them, the Super Bowl ad process begins in the prior summer, when they start kicking around ideas. They’ll usually have the concept locked in by September or October.
“I know for Super Bowl we wrote over 300 scripts,” he said. “It’s usually not like that on regular projects.”
Also Read: Mike Bloomberg Buys a 60-Second Super Bowl Ad for $10 Million
Also adding to the degree of difficulty: Every other brand and agency is rushing to get their celebrity or director of choice to sign on.
“Generally, everybody is producing around the same time,” Goldberg continues. “The best directors, the best actors or actresses… everybody is getting grabbed at once. You kind of want to get your dance partner early.”
For the agencies, Goldberg said, it’s the one thing that everyone in the company is jostling to work on. Even for those where it’s outside their typical purview.
“This year, the team that won works in, like, kind of a different channel. They’re not necessarily always on brand work,” he said. “It’s fun to be on Super Bowl because it’s the one thing you can point [out] to your friends and family.”
For the brands, the process begins even earlier.
Kumpis said Hyundai began their planning all the way back in April.
“It’s probably more of a nine month to one-year process, versus a regular spot, which would be about six months for a broadcast commercial,” she said.
Despite the massive amount of eyeballs, Izzo said that the Super Bowl is generally not the place to roll out a new ad campaign, but rather build upon the company’s existing campaign. He added that a new campaign launch could take just as long, if not longer, than putting together a Super Bowl spot.
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“Many things that obviously wind up going on the Super Bowl are just an amplified version of our existing campaigns. It’s a bit less about the actual campaign and more about the creative idea and the way the campaign is manifesting itself,” he said. “It’s a bit more of an event. We’re getting ready for our big Superbowl Party, which takes a lot more planning.”
The Super Bowl gives brands license to try something unique. During Super Bowl LI in 2017, Snickers filmed a live Super Bowl ad with Adam Driver, which (intentionally) goes awry. In the run-up to this year’s Super Bowl, Planters released its pre-game spot online, which features the “death” of its 104-year old mascot, Mr. Peanut, with plans to air honor the character with a “funeral” during the third quarter (though the real-life tragic death of L.A. Lakers icon Kobe Bryant over the weekend caused the food-maker to rethink at least some of its plans).
But sometimes brands can out-think themselves, argues Kumpis, putting too much emphasis on making that big splash and forgetting to actually promote their message.
“It’s great to be funny; it’s great to pull at your heartstrings. And that is part of our formula, but it has to be wrapped in something that’s distinct to our brand,” she said. “Otherwise, you are wasting all of that money and time. I’ve seen a lot of spots that I thought were really funny — and had nothing to do with the brand.”
Super Bowl Brings Out the Super Stars
Hyundai’s ad has Boston celebrities like John Krasinski, Rachel Dratch, Chris Evans and Red Sox legend David Ortiz. Mountain Dew got Bryan Cranston and Tracee Ellis Ross to parody “The Shining,” while the aforementioned Planters commercial included Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh.
But finding the right “dance partner,” as Goldberg puts it, can sometimes be as difficult as kicking a game-winning 50-yard field goal.
“The celebrity roller coaster is like none other, I mean, they’re their own brands,” said Goldberg. “It’s nerve-racking. When stars pass, they don’t always tell you why.” He recalled a particularly harrowing moment from a previous year Super Bowl, when the star didn’t come in until the very end of a three-hour shoot.
“We were we were in the fetal position for a while, going like, ‘This is where my career dies.'” But, as the Chiefs and 49ers are hoping for on Sunday night, this story had a happy ending.
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“That’s why you do that roller coaster and take that chance because they will bring things to script that you hadn’t thought of; they’ll make it their own,” he continued. “That star power is worth it; it’s just not for the faint of heart.”
Goldberg said the pre-release of ads and teasers in the weeks before the big game is probably the biggest change he’s seen. What was “unheard of” 10 years ago, is now commonplace.
“I think certain brands started taking shots at releasing it early and then everybody kind of got in on it,” he said. “Instead of just one day we can make extra content and other interesting things and get more interest for a longer run, so it’s just not Super Bowl Sunday.”
The other major difference? The price.
According to Kantar Media, the average cost for a 30-second spot grew 63%, from $2.77 million in 2010 to $4.51 million in 2019 (it peaked in 2017 at $4.7 million). When does that price get too expensive?
“We haven’t reached that point yet,” says Kumpis. “I’m not really sure what that threshold would be.”
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Facebook Q4 Earnings Preview: How Important is Instagram to Bottom Line?
As Facebook prepares to share its Q4 earnings on Wednesday, it feels as though 2018 never happened.
That was the year the Cambridge Analytica data leak came to light, when 87 million users had their profile information unknowingly accessed by the political data firm. Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, made countless mia culpas in the aftermath, promising to take user privacy more seriously. But the damage was only exacerbated by a string of embarrassing data breaches as the year came to a close. Facebook’s stock price took a major hit, dropping 25% on the year, closing 2019 at about $133 per share.
At the time, the social network looked both vulnerable and outdated to legions of potential users, especially Millennials and Gen Z’ers.
That didn’t turn out to be the case.
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Instead, Facebook rebounded in a big way last year, with its share price climbing more than 50% in 2019. Rather than abandon the platform, users stuck around — and more joined the fold, with Facebook entering the fourth quarter with 1.62 billion daily active users. Facebook’s users, it appeared, didn’t seem to care that much about its security or regulatory issues, even after Facebook paid $5 billion to the FTC to settle its data breaches. And with its users not jumping ship, advertisers had little reason to turn its back on Facebook, which pulled in $50 billion during the first 9 months of 2019, putting it only $5 billion shy of surpassing its total from the previous year.
Investors have responded the same way, shrugging off any lingering fears and pushing the company’s stock toward its all-time high of about $220 per share in the first weeks of 2020. That’s where Facebook finds itself on Wednesday. Wall Street will be looking to see if the company closed its bounce-back 2019 strongly when it shares its Q4 results this afternoon. Here’s what analysts will have their eyes on:
How Much Is Instagram Helping?
For years, analysts have expected Facebook to shine a light on Instagram’s monetization efforts, likely during an earnings call after the company posted underwhelming quarterly results. That hasn’t been the case, yet, with Facebook still growing its user base and ad revenue at an impressive clip in the last year.
But anyone that’s used Instagram lately knows it has beefed up its advertising efforts, fitting in more ads between Stories and Posts. Those ad dollars are funneling back into Facebook’s overall ad revenue, and the parent company may be forced to highlight Instagram’s performance sooner rather than later.
Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, in a note to clients, pointed to Instagram as one reason he’s bullish about Facebook this year. Nowak said he expects Instagram Stories to be a “material driver of growth” in 2020, as “engagement remains strong” and ad dollars continue to migrate to digital.
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“As such, we see Instagram Stories revenue growing [approximately] 150% in [2020],” Nowak said, adding about $1.7 billion in year-over-year sales in the process. Overall, the firm expects 10% of Facebook’s ad revenue growth to come from Instagram.
With Instagram ads becoming more conspicuous, keep an eye on whether Zuckerberg or another Facebook exec talks about how its popular pictures-and-messaging app has contributed to its top line.
Where are Users Coming From?
Facebook’s stock, like most social media companies, rises and falls in large part based on its user growth. As mentioned earlier, the company has been teflon to unflattering headlines in recent years, but it’s running into a small problem at home: It’s getting harder to find someone who doesn’t use Facebook on a daily or monthly basis in the U.S. or Canada — leaving little room for domestic growth. This remains Facebook’s strongest market in terms of generating revenue per user, but it”ll need to find customers in Asia, Latin America and Africa to continue growing at a substantial rate.
Facebook’s daily user growth by quarter
Stifel analyst John Egbert, in a note to clients this week, projected Facebook’s daily and monthly user count will both grow approximately 8% year-over-year, to 1.65 billion and 2.5 billion, respectively.
Time Spent on Facebook
The other side to the coin for Facebook when it comes to users is how much time they’re spending on the platform.
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The landscape for Facebook is different than a decade ago: It’s now competing against several streaming services, as well as growing competitors like TikTok, for how much attention they command. The longer it keeps users glued to its service, the more ads it can hit them with. And to keep viewers engaged, Facebook has debuted several new features in recent years. The results have been mixed.
Facebook Watch, its content hub, has produced shows with big-name celebrities like Tom Brady and Will Smith since launching two years ago, but it has largely failed to resonate with viewers. Last June, Facebook said 140 million users — or less than 10% of its daily users — watched at least 1 minute of its shows each day. It’ll be worth keeping an eye on whether Facebook has been able to attract more daily viewers during its Q4 report.
Other features could prove more impactful. This time last year, Facebook reported 500 million people used its Stories feature on a daily basis — and analysts anticipate that figure has dramatically increased.
“We estimate the company reached 1.5B MAUs during [the fourth quarter], which is a milestone we think would be well received by the Street, particularly amid increased competition for younger users from Snap and TikTok,” Egbert said in his note.
Not only would Wall Street welcome this, but advertisers would, too. Facebook users have started to use the service less, according to some metrics; Earlier this month, Similar Web said Android users in the U.S. were using Facebook 52 minutes per day — down from the 58 minutes users were spending on it each day in April 2018. If Stories continues to grab new users, that figure should get a healthy boost.
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